Physician and poet, was born in 1587, near Aberdeen, and was educated at the university of that city, on leaving which he went to Padua, where he took his doctor’s degree, and then settled in Paris. After an absence of nearly forty years, chiefly spent in travel, he returned to Aberdeen, and became Principal of the university till Archbishop Laud invited him to London, and obtained for him the appointment of physician in ordinary to Charles I. He published a collection of Latin epigrams, an elegant paraphrase of the Psalms in Latin verse, and a selection of the works of Scottish writers, entitled “Poetarum Scoticorum Deliciæ.” Died, 1641.

General

  Would have done honour to any country.

  Arthur Johnston is not so verbose, and has, of course, more vigour; but his choice of a couplet, which keeps the reader always in mind of the puerile epistles of Ovid, was singularly injudicious.

  The Scots certainly wrote Latin with a good ear, and considerable elegance of phrase. A sort of critical controversy was carried on in the last century as to the versions of the Psalms by Buchanan and Jonston. Though the national honor may seem equally secure by the superiority of either, it has, I believe, been usual in Scotland to maintain the older poet against all the world. I am nevertheless inclinded to think, that Jonston’s Psalms, all of which are in elegiac metre, do not fall short of those of Buchanan, either in elegance of style or in correctness of Latinity.

  As a latin poet, Arthur Johnston was all but the equal of Buchanan; and the literary reputation of Scotland depended abroad, if not in England, more on his Latin poetry than on the English poetry of his friends Drummond, Aytoun, and Alexander.

  His own poetical merits have perhaps been better recognised by English than by Scottish critics.